REVIEWS

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NORMAN CIGAR AND PAUL WILLIAMS argue that war crimes prosecutions are necessary not simply for the well-rehearsed reasons – ending cultures of impunity, achieving ‘closure’, restoring faith in due process – but because they seek to establish individual responsibility and, in doing so, ‘reinforce the principle that nations or entire populations . . . are not collectively responsible’ for criminal acts in wartime….

Williams and Cigar believed for some years before the indictment was finally drawn up during the Nato campaign in Kosovo in 1999 that Slobodan Milosevic should stand trial at The Hague…. [Their] expert little book deals with the principles that would have to be borne in mind at The Hague, and the evidence that would have to be submitted, in order to secure Milosevic’s conviction.

Jeremy Harding, The London Review of Books

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COMBINING LEGAL EXPERTISE with the scrupulous analysis of a mass of evidence, Cigar and Williams were the first to make a compelling case for the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic as a war criminal. I believe this work is one of the most important public ions to have appeared in the aftermath of the Bosnian war. It lays down a challenge to the international community that must not go unanswered.

Noel Malcolm, author of Bosnia: A Short History

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[CIGAR AND WILLIAMS] draw on documents from U.N. commissions and the Hague Tribunal (there are over 150 pages of reproduced reports, charges and letters) as well as a strong understanding of international law and precedents set by the Nuremberg trials.